Chapter Eighteen: Shedding the Skin

At the edge of the sky, the sun was setting. As far as the eye could see, there was only a Buddha within the sun. Accompanying the sunset was a shower of blood.

“That monk has lost!” Xu Zhong vaguely saw a flash of white light, fleeting as a dream or illusion.

“It’s over, the great monk is dead!” Kong Hui suddenly appeared behind Xu Zhong without warning.

Xu Zhong was startled, springing up like a tightly wound spring. This movement, in turn, startled Kong Hui.

“Amitabha, benefactor, I’m so relieved you’re unharmed.” Kong Hui bowed to Xu Zhong in a gesture of reverence. “That Night Wanderer is too difficult to handle; I can’t defeat him. But simply leaving doesn’t fit my Buddhist heart, so I came back to collect your body.”

Xu Zhong’s face was full of black lines, and Su Jue, perched on his shoulder, was momentarily speechless.

“Now that the great monk failed to capture the demon and was instead killed by it, I must rush to collect his remains.” After uttering a phrase of boundless Buddha, Kong Hui performed the mystical art of shrinking the ground into inches and vanished in the blink of an eye.

“This monk’s demonic nature is overwhelming!” Xu Zhong muttered.

Su Jue agreed wholeheartedly.

Chen County was deserted, so they prepared to head to Di County.

Xu Zhong rode the wind as he traveled, all the while pondering how to open the Golden Sun’s secret vault.

Before long, he stopped midair. Ahead, he saw a golden figure, as imposing as a mountain.

It was a Buddha, sitting on the ground like ancient roots entwined, radiant with a thousand beams of Buddha’s light and covered in myriad Sanskrit characters. Bathed in the golden glow, these Sanskrit characters sprouted limbs and heads, leaping onto the Buddha’s golden body, traversing between the five luminaries and the Niwan palace, working to heal the wounds.

Every slight tremor of the golden body set off crackling thunder, causing Xu Zhong to pause in awe.

“How could such a golden body have escaped our notice before?” Su Jue, standing on his shoulder, peered ahead.

“Perhaps it was cloaked by an illusion spell. The more powerful one is, the more one can see. With our weak cultivation, we have to get closer to perceive it.” If this was true even for cultivators, how much more so for ordinary mortals.

With mere mortal eyes, one could not witness such extraordinary spectacles.

Xu Zhong descended to the clouds.

A little closer, and he could hear someone preaching in the distance, “All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow. Like dew or lightning, so should you contemplate them.”

“Benefactors, what you see with your mortal eyes is but a dreamlike illusion. You think you see the great monk, but in reality, you see only your own mind. Retreat, all of you, retreat.”

Su Jue recognized the voice. “It’s Kong Hui.”

“Away with you!” The voice bristled with anger.

“If you refuse to leave, then I have no choice but to send you to the Buddha.” Kong Hui transformed into a dharma body, wielding the strength of dragons and elephants, staff in hand, striking out with beams of golden light.

In no time, the air was thick with the scent of blood.

The next instant, a monk’s staff hovered above Xu Zhong’s head.

“So, it’s the two benefactors.” Kong Hui withdrew the staff, which dripped with dark red blood. With a thought, the staff morphed into eight heavenly dragons coiling about him.

But the blood had not yet been washed away, still sticky with flesh, hair, and fragments of bone, making him look utterly fierce.

He then intoned a phrase of boundless Buddha.

A sweep of Buddha’s light cleansed away the filth, and with his robes draped anew, he looked every bit the worldly sage once more.

“Great monk, great monk, come meet the new friends I made.” Kong Hui drew them under the massive golden figure.

There sat a withered, emaciated monk. His body had lost its spiritual vitality, now gaunt and covered in wounds that even Buddha’s light could not heal—only great magic could remove them.

The monk barely lifted his eyelids to glance at Xu Zhong and Su Jue, but then his expression shifted. He raised his hand, ready to crush them both.

“Great monk, what are you doing?” Kong Hui shouted angrily, jolting the monk back to his senses.

He stood up.

The golden body behind him also rose, bones and joints crackling like thunder, the sound ringing in Xu Zhong’s ears.

“Are you connected to that demoness?” the great monk asked.

Seeing this, Kong Hui quickly distanced himself from Xu Zhong.

“We met once in an outer-world paradise, I recognize her, though she may not recognize me,” Xu Zhong replied calmly, patting Su Jue to comfort her.

“He doesn’t seem to be lying,” Kong Hui said cautiously.

“I know.” The great monk withdrew the golden body. “Your mind-reading skill was taught by me; if you know something, how could I not?”

Their mind-reading techniques could not discern Xu Zhong’s thoughts.

This was because Xu Zhong’s destiny had been altered, his fortune transformed, his fate concealed from heaven’s gaze.

Even those with great powers struggled to glimpse his future.

As the golden body returned to flesh, the wounds reappeared on the monk’s body—fist-sized holes oozed black blood.

“That was a poisonous snake,” the monk quickly explained, seeing Xu Zhong eyeing his wounds.

“She’s too venomous. The great monk can only suppress the poison, not remove it,” Kong Hui whispered, drawing closer to Xu Zhong. “I once heard a folk remedy: where poisonous snakes dwell, within seven steps is the antidote. But most such things are nonsense. I doubt the great monk can hold on much longer.”

“His golden body is too heavy for me to carry back to Bodhi Temple. Perhaps you two could…”

Kong Hui was sent flying by a single slap from the great monk.

“When I was chasing the demoness, I saw a place. If I’m not mistaken, that’s where she was sealed,” the great monk, apparently convinced by Kong Hui, considered heading for Tao County.

“But that place is now occupied by Daoist formation masters. If I go alone, they’ll surely take me for a thief…”

He then fixed his gaze on Xu Zhong.

…

Three breaths later, they arrived at the outskirts of Tao County.

From the clouds, they could see numerous cultivators riding clouds, flying back and forth above the abyss where Bai Zhaojü had escaped.

They were examining the formations, copying them down to send back to their sects, hoping to reconstruct the full array from ancient texts.

These formations had stood for over three thousand years, and still today their oppressive aura persisted. Anyone who drew near would find their dantian sealed, their spiritual energy and magic suppressed.

The great monk drew an eye on Xu Zhong’s palm.

Then, astonishingly, an actual eye grew from his palm, its pupil even bearing a tiny mouth.

“Go take a look at that abyss. If you find anything useful, I’ll let you know.”

With that, he released Xu Zhong, keeping Su Jue as collateral.

Xu Zhong drifted down to the rim of the abyss.

The chasm stretched for miles, several meters wide, its depths unfathomable.

On either side, the formation banners were tattered, their inscribed runes swirling in the air like fireflies, glowing faintly in the night.

That was all that could be seen from the outside.

A bit closer, and those runes intertwined, forming a brocade of text, or perhaps fluttering ribbons, shrouding the abyss.

Closer still, and the ribbons became incomplete halos, imprisoning something within the chasm.

“That’s the demoness’s aura,” the eye in his palm sniffed the air, having grown a nose. “Though she escaped, the demoness was sealed here for a thousand years. Her presence lingers thick and deep. If you had a celestial eye, you’d see a white serpent still imprisoned here.”

Xu Zhong, of course, could not see the so-called aura serpent.

He edged toward the abyss with utmost caution.

“Which sect are you from?” A sallow-faced, emaciated middle-aged man appeared behind him, suspiciously lifting Xu Zhong by the nape.

Xu Zhong hastily activated “Stars of the Celestial Cycle,” his acupoints twinkling like stars. “I’m a cultivator of the Starry Gate.”

“So, a Starry Gate disciple!” The man released him. “You’re in the wrong area. The Starry Gate is responsible for southern districts two and three; this is the territory of my Primordial Gate.”

Xu Zhong, having no idea where these districts were, could only nod and head south.

“You’re going the wrong way!” the man called after him. “That’s Yellow Springs Demon Sect territory.”

“I’m a bit lost,” Xu Zhong sighed, wiping cold sweat from his brow.

“Clearly. Anyone who wanders from the southern districts to the east must be a muddlehead,” the man chuckled, pointing him in the right direction.

“Thank you, senior. May I know your name?”

“Hurry along. I need to keep patrolling.”

Xu Zhong took his leave.

Only after Xu Zhong disappeared did the man relax, peeling off his human-skin mask to reveal yet another face.

Meanwhile, Xu Zhong deliberately avoided the others nearby.

Though occasionally discovered, he always managed to fool them with “Stars of the Celestial Cycle.”

He nearly circled the entire abyss, but the great monk never hinted at any useful herbs to gather.

It seemed he would return empty-handed.

Just then, the abyss trembled.

A strange radiance erupted from within. Seven-colored light burst forth, the broken banners outside channeling their remaining power, and the whole chasm was enveloped in a riot of glittering, divine brilliance.

The ground shook.

The instability caused the chasm to widen, cracks spreading, and the land ahead began to collapse.

“A shed snakeskin—it’s the demoness’s!” the eye in Xu Zhong’s palm suddenly spoke.

From his vantage point, he saw it clearly.

The great monk saw a ripple of white light surging within the abyss.

It was Bai Zhaojü’s cast-off snakeskin.

No matter how powerful a demon like Bai Zhaojü was, she could not escape her nature.

Sealed for three thousand years, she must have shed her skin at least three times.

For a serpent, sloughing off the old body is essential for future growth.

But to humans and other demons, a snake’s cast skin is a precious medicinal ingredient.

Especially when it comes from a cultivated serpent-demon like Bai Zhaojü—her shed skin could be used in medicine, for crafting magical artifacts, or making formation banners… its uses were countless.

However, this particular shed skin was strange.

It had become violently aggressive, tearing through the formations, devouring the banners, and with a single gulp draining the blood essence from half the cultivators nearby, leaving only desiccated corpses.

Fortunately, Xu Zhong had kept his distance.

Witnessing the carnage, Xu Zhong turned and fled.

The giant serpent ran rampant—and it was not alone.